


various and sundry

by circumlocute



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fluff, Godstuck, Implied Sexual Content, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-31 16:49:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15123731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/circumlocute/pseuds/circumlocute
Summary: A collection of standalone Homestuck ficlets and one-shots that didn't warrant being published individually.





	1. emo/goth solidarity (rose & dave, gen)

Dave drapes himself dramatically across Rose’s lap, because she doesn’t have her knitting needles out so  _therefore_ she is welcoming his presence; if she didn’t want him to snuggle up in her lap like a big Texan cat she’d take preemptive measures and arm herself against clingy blood relations, QED.   
  
She sighs and glances away from her book. “Yes?”  
  
“Yes what, I didn’t say anything.”  
  
“You were nearly vibrating with the barely-restrained urge to talk. I was providing you with the barest hint of social interaction, to stimulate conversation.”  
  
“Don’t ever say ‘stimulate’ when you’re talking about me ever again. Or to me. I forbid it.”  
  
Rose raises an eyebrow. “Forgive me for upsetting your delicate constitution. What did you want?”  
  
“Well, I was thinking.” Haha no he wasn’t, Dave’s plan started and ended with ‘I should go bother Rose,’ but he’s never let that stop him before. Time to pull a conversation topic out of his ass, it is his one and only skill.   
  
“I was thinking, we have got to rep edgelord counter culture harder. The prospit gang has chipper conformity down to a T, except for Jade’s furry thing, but that’s not the kind of counter culture I mean. Like, you’re goth and shit, so you’ve already kind of got a handle on scaring the shit out of soccer moms. But I want to do my civic duty.”  
  
Rose snickers. “And you find yourself tiring of your reputation as Earth’s last hipster? It must be so hard to build up one’s ego on enjoying older things when the entire culture is gone, I suppose. Or maybe the past has lost its shine now that you can simply visit it, should you so choose.”  
  
Dave blows a raspberry up at her, and gravity renders it entirely ineffective. Thanks gravity, you fucking bastard, now there’s spit on his shades. “The hipster thing was never sincere anyway, my interests just happened to line up with a few tools and it’s easier to pretend liking photography is some...sick jab at those pretentious fucks, than to say ‘oh yeah I actually do this in my spare time, please give me a wedgie and also take my lunch money.’”   
  
Rose takes mercy and ignores that prime opportunity to dig into Dave’s psyche, and merely hums acknowledgement.   
  
“So anyway. I could be punk, or grunge, or whatever. Get some guyliner. Mope with you about how everything is terrible and paradox space is a bitch, which we already do, so we don’t have to pencil anything extra into our schedules to meet an edgy quota. I can get a face tattoo. It’ll be sick.”  
  
“Oh, Dave.” Rose pets his hair indulgently. “There’s already a counter culture that suits you perfectly, although a little eyeliner might not hurt. You’re clearly emo. There was never anything else you could be.”  
  
Rose’s smile only widens at Dave’s indignant gasp.


	2. Liberty (dave/karkat, mature)

"Why are we rutting in the dirt in front of the soulless copper eyes of your latest Liberty find, again?" Karkat grumbles into the skin of Dave's neck, warm hands sliding up under Dave's shirt. They're both sweaty and covered in a fine layer of dust from digging up a statue all day. It would be gross if Dave wasn't so horny.  
  
"Because nothing gets me rock fucking hard like gravel in my asscrack?" Dave rolls his hips against Karkat's and is rewarded with a groan. "Get it? Rock hard?"  
  
Karkat's next groan is not one of arousal. "We're going to be even grittier than we are now and you're going to have rocks digging into your back. It'll be like mud wrestling in grimy slurry, you nasty fuck." For someone complaining so much, Karkat's pretty enthusiastic about the whole endeavor. He pinches one nipple and sets to work sucking a mark onto Dave's neck.   
  
"You're gonna fuck me anyway."  
  
"...Yeah, I'm gonna fuck you anyway."


	3. Pulse and Clockwork (dave/karkat, godstuck, T)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unnamed second person narrator is not anyone in particular, so feel free to imagine she's whoever you like, or no one at all.

You don’t know why you ask for the gods to help you. It’s just. Everything’s falling apart, and you’re quite frankly convinced that it’s not going to do anything, but--when everything’s gone to shit, what’ll a little desperate begging hurt?  
  
You don’t expect an answer. You don’t even expect the things some people talk about, a ~*~feeling~*~ of being heard, or whatever.  
  
You most certainly don’t expect the room to go dark and fill--then overflow--with a sudden presence. Two presences, something that definitely isn’t your own thoughts informs you. You think it’s smug.  
  
The presences coalesce in front of you, forming substance and shape from smoke. The first one is...a troll, almost. His eyes are lurid red, overflowing and trailing unnaturally bright streaks of what you know instantly is blood, despite the impossible color. There’s a gash across his chest, too clean and perfect in shape to be real, blood flowing in a constant motion and dripping onto the floor. The ground beneath him is pulsing with red light whenever a drop lands, throbbing and wet and  _alive._  When he opens his mouth, more bubbles forth, but his speech is perfectly clear. And  _loud._  
  
“I think you’re scaring her,” he says, turning those liquid eyes towards the other figure.  
  
“ _I’m_  scaring her? Are you serious?” This one’s mouth doesn’t move at all when he speaks; it stays pressed into an expressionless line. His hair...isn’t. It’s feathers, orange and golden and black, dusting down his neck and the sides of his cheeks. His eyes are glittering black mirrors in his skull, unblinking, reflecting your own terrified face back at you in perfect stereo. The way he moves, turning to look at you, is so fast you’re not sure it counts as  _movement_  at all. He goes from one pose to the next without any frames in between; he is not looking at you and then he is, like a series of photographs. The shadow he’s casting on your wall has wings.  
  
“Maybe I’m scaring her a little,” the other one--Blood--admits, before looking back at you. He blinks, and there’s a feeling of...of  _compressing_ , fitting something just a little too big into a container that was not built for it but holds anyway.  
  
And then he’s looking at you through the same faintly luminescent yellow eyes you’ve seen on every troll you’ve ever met. His irises are still that pulsing, unnatural crimson, but otherwise, he. Looks like a troll. Looks like a kid, like you. The gash in his chest has rendered itself more symbolically, an image on a simple brown shirt. His horns are  _tiny._  There’s a hunch to his shoulders you’d call defensive if this wasn’t the _Knight of fucking Blood_  in your bedroom, and heavy bags under his eyes. He looks exhausted, bone-deep tired, but alert like he wouldn’t sleep if he had the best bed in the world. Do gods need sleep?  
  
The other one...Time, you think? Doesn’t change, and looking at him makes your head hurt, hot and cold, like you’re trying to cram too much in there at once. He cocks his head at you, birdlike, still moving too fast.  
  
“It’s been a long time since we were mortal,” he says, almost...apologetic? “It’s easy to forget how.”  
  
“Now you  _are_  scaring her,” Blood says, smug, reaching up towards Time’s face, “It’s like riding a two-wheel device, come here.”  
  
“You’re better at meat stuff than I am.” Time’s cheek ends up in Blood’s hand, anyway, and those unblinking black eyes close.  
  
There's the compressing feeling again, and then the feathers melt away into hair, orange and gold with the occasional black feather still sticking up. He’s wearing sunglasses, now, still mirrored but not reflecting you back at yourself quite so intensely. He has freckles and a beaky nose, and now that he's got a normal human face he's not doing so good at keeping it blank, lips quirking up into an amused smile. He holds himself like he's not sure he's allowed to be here. They both look very nearly like normal people, imperfect in a thousand tiny ways, and you're not sure it's solely for your benefit.  
  
“I don’t do  _meat stuff._ ” Blood sounds annoyed, but his hand lingers on Time’s cheek. “I do  _people_  stuff. You know this.”  
  
Your head doesn’t hurt quite so badly when you look at them, now. They almost seem to have forgotten you’re there, and you’re not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing.  
  
“Oh my gods,” you say.  
  
“Yeah.” Blood grins.


	4. Top-up (dave/karkat, jarred dead things, T)

"What are you  _doing?_ " Karkat asked, voice raising sharply with alarm.  
  
Dave turned around from what he was doing--pouring  _mystery fluid_  into his  _jar of sheep eyes--_ and gave a little wave with one gloved hand.  
  
"It's top-up day for the peeper crew, my dude." He gestured to the bottle of liquid and screwed the cap back onto the jar. Karkat shuddered.  
  
"Why can't you just let it sit and stew in its current juices instead of letting out all the organ fumes. I don't want essence of woolbeast ocular in my fucking lungs."  
  
"Because," Dave said, spreading his hands as if to indicate the other jars around the room, "these puppies slowly evaporate, and if I leave them alone like  _some_ people suggest, they'll eventually shrivel up and turn into the saddest, nastiest raisins you have  _ever_ seen. You don't wanna bear witness to that, man. Soooo sit back, relax, and let the magic happen."  
  
He made finger pistols at Karkat and moved on to a jar containing some small Earth mammal. Karkat couldn't smell anything, not from across the room at least, but he didn't trust that not to mean he wasn't inhaling some sort of airborne neurotoxin.  
  
"What are you even putting in there?"  
  
Dave spun the bottle around so the label was pointing towards Karkat. "Just rubbing alcohol, yo. That's what these were all made with and ethanol can be a little harder to get? So, uh. Isopropyl alcohol does the trick." He shook the bottle for emphasis before adding another small amount to the mystery mammal.  
  
Rubbing alcohol definitely had fumes, but--it was an antiseptic, how did that even  _work?  
_  
"And you just...leave them in alcohol, and suddenly they're preserved for all eternity?"  
  
"Ehhhh." Dave made a shaky gesture with one hand and started inspecting the rest of the shelf. "Some people do? But just dunkin' them in a jar is asking for some nasty sludge. You gotta inject it with alcohol or whatever, or you can fix them with formalin, and you  _have_ to use formalin for big stuff. But it's, uh, a pretty dangerous chemical if you're not really fuckin' careful, hence the gloves." He wiggled his fingers for emphasis.  
  
"...Dangerous."  
  
"Yeah, but don't worry, I'm super careful. Just don't go out there trying to preserve a whateverbeast heart for me next Valentine's, babe."  
  
Karkat crossed his arms and gave him a flat look. "I wasn't going to, I can promise you that."  
  
"You should totally buy me one, tho. Hint hint." Dave turned around, waggling his eyebrows, and tossed his gloves into the trash. "I'm thrilled to pieces you're taking an interest in this fine, fine craft. My tender maiden's heart is going to burst. And then you can put  _me_ in a jar."  
  
"I'm not taking an interest in your macabre bullshit, beyond my general level of interest in most of your hobbies, which begins and ends with the fact that it's  _you_ who's doing it." He  _did_ add the heart jar thing to his mental list of Valentine's ideas, though. It was kind of romantic, in a disgusting way.  
  
"Wow, swoon. You are so interested." Dave grinned, waggling his eyebrows even more furiously. It was a miracle they didn't fly off his face.  
  
"I'm  _not._ "  
  
"Oh, but you are." Dave pointed two fingers at his eyes, and then at Karkat's. "I can smell it on you."  
  
"After you've been huffing corpse fumes for fuck only knows how long? I sincerely doubt that. Go get cleaned up and then I'm taking you to dinner somewhere where the only bones  _or_ alcohol in sight is safe for consumption." Karkat looked him over. Stained t-shirt, ripped jeans, messy hair...all up to Karkat's bedrock-level grooming standards, and cute as ever, but he knew Dave would pitch a fit if he took him out like this. And even with gloves, eating right after fucking with his specimens seemed like a uniquely terrible idea.  
  
"Oh, eugh, don't bone-crunch at dinner, man, it's so nasty. I'm not gonna go if you're gonna eat the bones." Despite his complaining, Dave was practically bouncing in place now, and rushed off to the ablutionblock to wash up.  
  
Karkat couldn't help the tiny smile on his face as he headed to his own room. He was going to put on some pants that weren't sweats, and a shirt with actual buttons, if only because Dave liked it when he dressed up.  
  
Before shutting the door, he glanced back at the shelves of dead things lining Dave's respiteblock and shook his head. Nope. Definitely not interested.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, this one was straight-up just an excuse to talk about wet specimens. Hopefully it was at least almost as fun to read as it was to write.


End file.
